The last recent rom-com I watched (re: politely forced) was Music and Lyrics, which was so amazingly terrible it even made the domineering rental-picker blush. One of the problems nowadays with this genre is an utter void of chemistry between the leads in favor of “mall hot” eugenics. Feh to that! Without even knowing the plot or director, the words “Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, epicly in love” is not really deserving of an eye-roll. Let them and their tears and their city-chic pets make out in the rain, sounds totally opposite-of-mall-hot to me.

EW‘s Hollywood Insider reports that the two young and talented actors are in talks to star in the “anti-romantic comedy”500 Days of Summer, with Deschanel in chats to play a girl who doesn’t believe in love, while Gordon-Levitt would play the guy who does, indeed, believe and must show her. Ooh la la. Cue Elvin Bishop’s drunktastic “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” from Boogie Nights on your WinAmp. Director Marc Webb, making a crossover from MTV music videos for Good Charlotte (blech), Ashley Simpson (blech) and Weezer (hi high school) to features, will helm the pic for Slashfilm faveFox Searchlight. The script is by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber who, uhhh, wrote The Pink Panther 2.

Deschanel is climbing the Tinseltown ranks in major upcoming flicks like M. Night’s The Happening and Jim Carrey’s Yes Man, and just released a cutesy folk album with M. Ward called She & Him. She was also eye-lash-battingly great on the third season of Weeds. Gordon-Levitt is currently cashing in on Stephen Sommers’s G.I. Joe in the role of Cobra Commander and can next been seen, next week in fact, in the dismally reviewed Iraq War fable Stop-Loss.

Discuss: Mushy mushy. What movie got love right? Will these two peoples have chemistry on-screen? What star-crossed lover movie(s) made you grab the Pepto?